It definitely is a bit flat visually in the virtual world segments, but that may be on purpose--to make us feel how 'flat' in some sense the fantasy is. The visual work in the 'real world' where they work with host bodies etc. is much more vivid and thoughtful on the whole. I would not be at all surprised to see the 'virtual' kick it up a notch visually once things start to go to shit.

I think the in-park stuff is trying to evoke the feel of the westerns that are the ostensible theme of the park. Anyway, the third episode did a good job of pointing towards answers to some of the questions from upthread (what's with the guns, why can't the hosts just knife or bludgeon the guests, etc.).

Third ep felt a bit slow to me. I am still trying to find a rooting interest, and the slow vagueness of this ep came close to boring me. Overall I am really enjoying it though, even though her association with Marilyn Manson has forever tainted ERW. How fun would it be if they introduced some Deadwood actors in for grins (and to pay homage to the greatest Western TV show ever)?

I am not sure where I want them to go, but I hope they feed us enough information to keep each episode engaging. Add me the the list of the folks loving the modern music as scores.

When speaking of the MMOG industry, the glass may be half full, but it's full of urine. HaemishM

Always wear clean underwear because you never know when a Tory Government is going to fuck you.- Ironwood

Who the hell taught you how to write? Fuck, that sentence is like internet transmitted face-attacking knives. Jesus. schild

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

At one point near the start, when Teddy & Dolores were having the 'Some day' chat, my wife paused it and said 'so much of this is sub-par B-grade Western cliche but because we know they're all robots it suddenly becomes captivating'.

Haven't watched this yet, but out of curiosity, are they also including the Roman World and Medieval World's at the park? Or did they cut those entirely?

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Apparently George Martin gave them permission if they wanted to have a quick scene implying that next door to Westworld is Game of Thrones World and they almost went for it. They may have decided that was too playful--e.g., they don't really want to validate the idea of this kind of virtual world experience.

Ah, that's to bad. Would have given them more room to play with stuff (also excuse for Roman Orgy ). Especially since I'm having a hard time seeing how they can stretch the concept out 5 damn seasons. Though I'll try to give it a watch tonight.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Saw the first episode, enjoyed it. Great production quality, and a nice build up of dread.

I lost it when This show may be the greatest satire/criticism of MMO and open world games made mainstream. Literaelly all of the development cost concerns and hurdles for an MMO are here, but at a much larger and costlier scale. I really hope they keep up the jokes.

Having said all that..... I still have no idea how they plan to make this 5 seasons. If robots aren't raping and murdering people by the end of this season, it's going to wear out its welcome. And then, I don't know how the hell they can extend things another 4 seasons after that without a conclusion. They say they want to avoid the lost situation, but they kind of already are in it. In that when I watched the first season of Lost, I absolutly loved it. But right off said there was no way they could take this beyond 2 or possibly 3 seasons if they stretch.

Note, I want to be wrong! Acting and production value was amazing. I love sci-fi. This has everything going for it. I'm just not sure how.

Turns out I was right.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

1) They have held open the possibility of other "themes" being out there.

2) They mapped out the plot to 5 years to avoid the "Lost" situation.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Well, I'll trust that they have good writers and know what they are doing. But right now, saying they have it plotted out 5 seasons sounds like they are writing themselves into the Lost situation. Because I don't see how you can stretch this fairly simple concept that long without a shit ton of filler and/or generally bogging down the plot with all sorts of side distractions. But hey, again, hopefully they have something cool planned out.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Seriously wat? You can't see how a story (ANY story) could last for 5 seasons of TV? Think about any TV show that was good for several seasons, examples: Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Wire, The Sopranos, Babylon 5, Star Trek TNG/DS9, etc. etc.

Every one of those, and countless others, demonstrate how stories can change, develop, branch off, go in unexpected directions. I'm not a writer but it doesn't take 10 seconds of thought to imagine a million different ways that stories could be written to expand to however long you were able to keep people watching and the money coming in!

Top of my head for Westworld: Robots start to go wrong and break directives because of odd update changing their thought processes, lots of battles between hosts & guests & security etc, hostage situations, massacres, internal politics @ HQ, groups of AI's banding together, groups of humans siding with them, infiltrations of either side by members of other factions/species, military involvement from outside the park, revelations about true purpose behind the park/parks, break out of AIs into the outside world, questions about who is AI/human both within and without the park, society outside the park reacting to escape of new AIs that are on the surface indistinguishable from humans, love stories between humans and AIs, revelations about the pasts of Ford et al and the early days of the R&D in setting up WW, self-aware AIs establishing their own mini-societies, AI groups capturing enough resources to start making more AIs with programming that they themselves control, that could lead to larger scale wars between different AI/human factions, questions being raised at large in society about the nature of individuality and whether the new AI-made AIs should be granted sentient status, reveals that one of the purposes of the park was to create AIs for colonisation of other planets which could then turn into a hundred different story lines about how previous colonisation attempts failed because of human failures, etc.

The basic premise of the show is just that - a basic premise. Good writing can take that premise anywhere it wants and it'll still be entertaining & interesting as long as the writing stays good. Or you know, it could go The Walking Dead route and be good for 1-2 seasons, then slide into mediocrity for another 6 seasons punctuated with the occasional fun episode or 3. Least it's gonna have tits in it, unlike TWD.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.

The "maze" turns out to reveal that Westworld is already into the Real World. Lots of multi-season possibilities from that: plots within plots within plots.Westworld and the other parks become "ungovernable", e.g., the creators completely lose control but cannot for some reason shut them down. But there's some sort of McGuffin that they need inside the parks (maybe a magic OFF button) so they'll have to form up a team to go find it. The AIs decide to invade the real world, but it's a tricky alliance--characters who have to overcome their programming in order to work together. Imagine if in Game of Thrones world, the Cersei AI has to decide to work with the Danerys AI in order to invade the real world--can you become more than what you were made to be? Cue ye olden scorpion and frog parable and all that.

The big thing they'd need for five seasons is to have some deeper and deeper mysteries, reveals and big changes each season--something that changes the status quo. I could imagine a really interesting situation if they had a metafictional refugee camp somewhere down the line, where you had Dungeons and Dragons and Westworld and Counterstrike characters etc. all mingling.

Apoc, I guess let me try to be more clear on this, as we might be talking past each other, heh.

All of those shows you mentioned are open ended. Buffy: A girl that runs around and kills demons. You can endlessly write new episodes. Wire/Sporanos: daily life of crime bosses and cops. You can endlessly write new episodes. B5/Star Trek: People exploring/living in space, having new adventures every week. You can endlessly write new episodes.

Westworld: Rich people play in robot amusement park. Something with the programming goes wrong, and the robots start murdering everybody. Survivors attempt to escape the park while battling psycho robots, as scientist attempt to stop it. Eventually survivors escape/die, or robots win/destroyed.

We already have the entire basic plot. It’s not open ended (obviously they can heavily modify things, but they seem pretty committed to that basic premise). Even in episode one the robots are starting to fuck up. If full robot rebellion doesn’t happen by the end of this season, I have a hard time seeing how it won’t get boring fast (I only have one or two more episodes of seeing people playing in the park before I will be well over that). And then that leaves 4 more seasons of trying to escape the park and solve the murderbot problem. Unless the series turns into a story about the siege of Robot Aleppo, it shouldn’t take that long. Everything you mentioned in your list of ideas is great, but all can be done in the span of a season (10 hours of screen time).

So, again, the main question is how they plan to fill in the blanks. They are taking a story that was told in 1.5 hours and are going to turn it into a 50 hour long story. They’re already setting the stage with talk of ulterior motives for the park as well as the ‘deeper game’ thing. And I look forward to seeing where they take this. I just remain a bit skeptical about being able to fill that much screen time with a tight, well written plot given the source material. That’s all, I swear!

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Fair enough, sorry, I went a bit "Someone on the internet is wrong!" there. There's definitely nothing to say that the 1.5 hr original story is as far as it goes though.

I'm also a firm believer in it being how well a story is told that matters, not necessarily what the story is actually about. Case in point, currently watching Black Sails and it's great because the story is told remarkably well. Some episodes almost nothing happens except people speaking, and they're captivating. I don't care if they stay firmly within the Westworld park the entire time, if they tell the story well enough.

Anyway, I also think that these days we all try to judge shows too early. Time will tell. I'm not averse to stopping watching a show if it turns to shit.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.

We know where the movie went with the original premise. We don't know where the show goes. The bots could take control of the park in Season 1 and be involved in a Not versus person World War in Season 3... Even though the name of the show is 'Westworld', we don't necessarily know it will stay contained in the park the entire time...

And its HBO so 5 seasons could be anywhere from 40-50 episodes. That is not that much to fill.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something. We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail

Well we just watched ep4 of this and haven't watched TWD yet, but I read the thread and now don't really want to.

Ended up watching the last 20 mins of ep3 of this too since wife had fallen asleep before the end last week. Noticed lots of little things I hadn't before, particularly regarding Bernard, who I am increasingly certain is a robot.

Also interesting info about Ed Harris being a big shot in the real world. Corporate rivalry maybe? Or is that too obvious. And the guns leave actual bullet fragments in the hosts, but disintegrate on impact on guests. Curiouser and curiouser.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.

The writers CLEARLY play MMOG's, or at the very least understand them and the player mindset.

I think Ed Harris's character is the representative that the board sent, the one Anthony Hopkins was talking to the woman about in the Mexican plantation. That scene was just fantastic. I still think the black-haired girl (the one who was the girlfriend/wife on Raising Hope) is a robot. Bernard I'm not sure about yet. He is clearly trying to raise the robot's consciousness much like Arnold, and Ford knows it.